Application of machine type communication (MTC) refers to application, such as traffic control and management, remote meter reading, remote monitoring, mobile payment, locating and tracing, or medical monitoring of network communication performed by one network element or between multiple network elements in a case in which human participation is not required.
An application service platform (Machine Type Communications Server, MTC Server) sends a data packet (such as information reporting or information delivery with a data amount of only several bytes) with a small data amount to user equipment (UE) by using an established service interaction functional entity (Machine Type Communications-Interworking Function, MTC-IWF) and a mobile communications network. A specific transmission procedure is: The MTC-IWF obtains, from the MTC Server, a data packet that needs to be sent to the UE, selects a proper transmission path for the data packet according to a size of the data packet, and transmits the data packet to the UE by using a mobile network.
However, in actual network architecture deployment, information transmission manners supported by networks deployed by operators are not the same, and the MTC-IWF cannot accurately select a proper transmission path for a data packet, resulting in that the data packet cannot be transmitted to UE or transmission of the data packet to the UE is delayed, thereby affecting service experience of a user.